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RSS feedsYou may have heard the term 'social networking' bandied about lately. Those whose noses are finely tuned to sniff out trendy management jargon may smell a rat, probably one wearing a shiny suit and sipping a double-decaf choco-latte.
Stripped of its trendy jargon, what we're talking about is the old routine of how to make friends and influence people. Moving the process online has two major benefits: you can connect with people from around the world; and you don't have to get cramp in your wrist from all those handshakes.
Web surfers are a friendly bunch on the whole, so the sites we look at in this feature focus mainly on how to pursue common interests and hobbies. But social networking can also be good for your career, so we'll also open the door to sites that can open doors for you.
Put simply, a social network is any group of people with a shared interest. This could be your family, work colleagues with whom you're friendly, or team mates from the Sunday league five-a-side football team.
If a single person from one of these groups introduces you to another individual or activity, you have successfully 'networked'. This means most of us have been social networkers for most of our lives without realising it.
The 'online' bit extends these connections to the individuals and communities we interact with via the internet. So whether you're trying to land a job, find a date, sell your house or start a club, social networking sites could put you in the right place at the right time without leaving your computer.
Flickr
www.flickr.com
Though still 'in beta' (a test phase to iron out glitches), Flickr is perhaps the trendiest networking site on the internet. The site uses Flash (an animation system that lives up to its name but can fray the nerves after a while).
Primarily a photo-sharing community, Flickr turns your browser into a hub of activity, incorporating message board and newsgroup-style communities with 'real-time' chat rooms and instant messaging.
You can even drag photos uploaded from your computer into a conversation to illustrate a point, and you can use Flickr to update your weblog if you have one.
Registration is free and the community is still small and friendly enough for you to meet Flickr's creators within a day of joining.
There are groups devoted to exploring and discussing lifestyle choices and hobbies but, for the most part, this is socialising for the sake of it. So while you may come across online collaborations between digital artists and electronic musicians, you're unlikely to find a job or a date through Flickr alone.
Flickr is designed for the visually orientated. From the thousands of updated photographs in daily circulation between members, to the smoothly animated windows and pastel-coloured menus, Flickr is a delight to the eye.
Webloggers, designers and web professionals seem to be the dominant members and, although they're friendly and welcoming, this really isn't a site for internet novices. Even the help pages assume you have a modicum of internet experience, including techniques for moving large files around such as FTP.
Because the bulk of your social experience will take place within Flickr itself (in contrast to Tribe, reviewed below, where you reap your networking rewards within your community), you may find yourself checking in on your Flickr account several times a day to see which photos have been updated and who's online to chat. In this way, it's a curiously addictive service. You have been warned.
Tribe
www.tribe.net
Where Flickr is devoted to socialising online, San Francisco-based Tribe is all about making connections online in order to enhance your life offline.
Put together by a team who have experience in internet and newspaper classifieds, Tribe operates on the six-degrees-of-separation theory, in which every person in the world is said to be connected to any other individual through six 'friends of friends'.
Registration is free and you can add as many or as few personal details as you like. Most people upload a photo and there's also a section called 'Why you're here' which acts as a filter. For example, if you're here to find a job and Bob is here for romance, you're unlikely to have anything in common. But you never know.
You then set about building your network either by inviting people you know to join Tribe, or by joining an interest group and getting on the good side of an already-registered Tribe user.
Networks are hierarchical and range from 'one-degree' friends (people you know) and two-degree friends (friends of your friends), through to four-degree friends (friends of the friends of your friends).
Still with us? With your network established, Tribe is your oyster: you can find a job or recruit someone; set up a group (or 'tribe') dedicated to a hobby; buy or sell a house; or find a roommate. And you can do all this via the people who know people you know within your 'trusted' network.
Tribe's best feature is that networks aren't static. Just as you change over time, so can your networks and you can even remove someone as your friend but keep them as a contact.
There is also a vast range of interest topics to choose from, including gaming, motoring, politics, relationships, natural therapies and disability support. Tribes devoted to one topic often have sub-groups which are cross-referenced by geography, gender and so on.
Ryze
new.ryze.com
The business-orientated Ryze is the closest any of the sites in our round-up come to the 'power-handshake' concept we mentioned earlier. However, it's all about individuals wanting to extend their professional networks through common interests and shared friends.
Basic membership is free but, for a small fee, this can be upgraded to Gold status for enhanced services like advanced searches and lists of new members. Adverts for this service pop up on every other page on the site, and may prove tiresome.
The basic package is more than adequate, however. Each Ryze member gets their own homepage, which can include photos, business information and educational history. Once you've made connections they will be listed here, as well as any networks (geographical or topic-based sub-groups) you join.
Inviting new members is made easier with a plug-in that harvests your address list from Microsoft Outlook but, clearly, this isn't much help if you're using Eudora, for example.
Unlike Tribe, you can't remove friends while keeping them as contacts, but Ryze does support selective information sharing. So Bob might know your home phone number while Jane might only have your work email address, so you choose the degree of privacy you have while networking.
In addition to these features, Ryze offers discussion forums, contact lists and a real-time person-to-person chat facility. On top of that, if you're hosting a real-life networking event, you can use Ryze to invite members and distribute information like delegate lists and photographs.
The sheer weight of membership, combined with Ryze's multiple features, threatens to swamp new subscribers but, thanks largely to the comprehensive help section, it all hangs together and connects people effectively.
Friendster
www.friendster.com
Friendster was founded in 2002 and pre-dates the current social-networking fad. It was originally used as a dating tool, although it's currently trying to shed this image. One of the most frequently asked questions is 'Should I sign up if I'm not single?'.
Signing up is simple and free: you just complete a personal details form, add your friends and start building a network. The difference between this and other sites is that your networks are built solely through the friends you already have.
Sadly it's also very slow, although we live in hope that this will be dealt with once Friendster is out of its apparently unending beta-test phase.
Orkut
www.orkut.com
When Friendster rejected search giant Google's offer of purchase, Google just went ahead and created its own social networking site and, to add insult to injury, made it an invitation-only affair.
The high-profile secrecy has created a definite buzz, and Orkut is set up similarly to Friendster but is much faster as it runs on Google technology.
Orkut, named after Orkut Buyukkokten, a Google engineer, uses a gimmick called 'karma ratings' so that members can rate their peers using hearts and ice cubes to describe their 'coolness' and 'attractiveness'.
But is Orkut's secrecy a clever marketing ploy to ensure that the site is talked about, or a way to test wannabe Orkuteers? Well, both probably, but if you can't sleep until you get in, here are a few ideas.
You could visit Orkut Buyukkokten's personal website and get to know him in the hope that he invites you.
Or you could join the official Google Community and post in the Orkut forum, where Orkuteers are known to hang out. If you get involved in a discussion, lend a friendly ear or offer a solution to a problem, you may get offered an invitation.
Social networking breeds social networking. Why not join one of the hipper sites like Flickr and search for 'Orkut' under members' interests?
Linkedin
www.linkedin.com
Linkedin is another business-orientated website, but this is aimed at upper-level managers and the kind of executive that can be found in the turrets of an ivory tower. The idea behind it is that you invite only your trusted friends, they invite theirs and so on.
Unlike Ryze, Linkedin doesn't go in for trivia like job opportunities, social interests or discussion forums; it's all about business networking, so only business details are included.
Also, you can't search for people outside your network and members don't have profiles, so getting ahead really is all about whom you know.
ZeroDegrees
www.zerodegrees.com
ZeroDegrees hopes you'll use the aforementioned six-degrees-of-separation theory to meet employers, buyers and prospects via its website. Like Ryze, membership is free and you can upload your contacts using the Contact Upload Wizard plug-in, which also handily reorganises your contacts on your PC.
Once uploaded, your trusted friends are automatically invited, then you can see a list of their contacts and their contacts' contacts so you can plan how you're going to reach your target contact.
Some might call this cynical networking but, since business networking is all about getting to know the right people, it seems honest enough.
Friends Reunited
www.friendsreunited.co.uk
Yes, we all may have been using it for ages, but Friends Reunited is a social networking site, if a retrospective one. Steve and Julie Pankhurst first came up with the idea of a site solely for contacting old classmates in 1999.
Simply find your old schools, colleges and universities and register in the year that you left, with a brief account of what you've been up to since then to see what all your peers have been up to as well.
The service is free until you want to contact an old pal, which costs £5 per year. Its vast database is likely to harbour many names you recognise.
Get networking
Now that we've unveiled the mystery of online social networking it turns out it isn't that different from what we've already been doing; it just has a few extra high-tech features.
Networking online is less time consuming as people's interests and objectives are laid out for you to see, which does make it a far shallower experience but, in terms of business networking or simply lining up interesting events and activities, this is perhaps no bad thing.
One final point: do be careful who you talk to and what you say. It's easy to become trusting online but remember that, while the internet can simplify communication, it can camouflage danger too and you may not always be communing with the kindred spirit you envisaged. Apply some common sense, though, and you can have a lot of fun.
Safety first
As we've mentioned, do be careful about who you talk to online and what you tell them. With online social networking, the lines are blurred between actual friends - someone you trust with your personal information in real life - and 'trusted' friends online.
The safest way to go about things is to create a separate email account to register (for instance, with Hotmail or Yahoo) and never give out geographical information more detailed than the town in which you live.
If you plan to meet up with someone as a result of online social networking, make sure at least two people you're close to are aware of where you're going, who you're meeting and when you expect to return, and try to keep your initial meetings to daylight hours.
See also:
Got something to share with the rest of the world? Build your own website with our easy-to-follow guide 07 Sep 2004
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